Social change without
violence is possible. However, most people who have studied the
history of social change believe that violence rarely slows change.
The honest question (despite a lot of revisionist history) is
whether the violence is worth the cost. The difference between the
position that violence is a viable tactic (worth the cost) for
achieving animal rights is that those who believe in violence, even
death, consider animals to have feelings on the same order of
magnitude as humans, and many people felt it was worth dieing or
killing to free the slaves. This philosophy was summarized by Dr.
Jerry Vlasak on the television show "60 Minutes" when he said that
those who claimed to support animal rights but not by using violence
were "disingenuous".

Response to Statement by Rod Coronado about the Animal Liberation Movement
(at bottom of this page)

While most animal rights activists have been laboring long and hard in the
trenches of the war for the hearts and minds of compassionate human beings,
a small and extreme minority of us has been performing violent acts in the
name of our movement. In a recent statement about the animal liberation
movement, posted to several internet sites, Rod Coronado argued that it is
now time for the animal rights movement to discuss "tactics," including the
use of "physical violence." Mr. Coronado implicitly supports that extreme
minority of our movement, which presumes that progress can more quickly be
made with violence than with nonviolence, although he does so in the vaguest
possible language. He even compares the righteousness of violent tactics
used by some "animal activists" to the violent resistance of the Jews of the
Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, who courageously battled Nazi
exterminators.

While Mr. Coronado and I have our differences, I do agree with him about one
thing: it is indeed time for a discussion of the tactics of a miniscule
minority that is smearing the name of our entire movement and setting back
our progress by years. So, in the spirit of free and open discussion of
this important issue, here are some reasons why violence in the name of
animal liberation is just plain wrong:

* VIOLENCE IS A TACTIC THAT CAN NEVER WIN. In a democracy, victory is
in the numbers. When we have more votes for compassion than the other side
has for exploitation, we win. To get those votes we need to appeal to the
mainstream of voters and become a mass movement. Anything that stands in
the way of our becoming a mass movement is an obstacle. And there is no
greater obstacle than violence, which makes us all look like extremists and
lunatics in the eyes of the mainstream. Violence is the way that you stop
the movement from gaining widespread public acceptance. That's why, during
the days of the War in Vietnam, the U.S. government infiltrated anti-war
groups and turned them to violence in order to decrease their influence. It
was called Project Cointelpro and it should remind anyone serious about
winning animal liberation that, in western democracies, violence works to
the benefit of the oppressors, not the oppressed. It does this by creating
a backlash that hurts the very movement that it is supposed to benefit and
separating the movement from the mainstream. Let's not be fooled again by
those who promise success but give us only violence.

* VIOLENCE IS NOT NECESSARY. While there might be times in which
victims of violence have no choice but to violently resist their tormentors,
such as the Jewish resistance fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, it is a false
and misleading analogy to make a comparison to the animal rights movement.
The Warsaw Ghetto resistance fought a dictatorial and malignant enemy
without any hope of winning any more than a dignified death. But those of
us lucky enough to live in western democracies are not fighting for dignity
in a hopeless situation. We're fighting for justice and compassion toward
animals and, hopefully, toward human beings as well. We should have learned
from Mahatma Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United
States that the most effective way to win massive social change in a
democracy is to win the hearts and minds of people with the justice and
righteousness of our cause. That takes education, not threats. And it can
only be done by nonviolence, a tried and proven way to fight successfully
for the animal liberation for which we all long.

* UNNECESSARY VIOLENCE IS NEVER JUSTIFIED. Those who support violence
in the name of animal liberation believe that it is justified by the
violence that is committed against animals. But, it is a basic rule of
ethics that two wrongs do not make a right. Those who utilize violence to
try to achieve animal liberation are, instead, simply adding the evil of
their violence to the evil of animal exploitation. In their efforts to
spread fear instead of compassion, they make us all look more like thugs and
terrorists than compassionate human beings trying to make this world a
better place, thus playing into the hands of the enemies of animal
liberation. In truth, ours is a movement based upon justice and mercy, not
bombs. But, why should anyone believe that we are truly outraged by
violence against animals when some of us hypocritically carry out or support
violent acts against other humans? Hypocrisy doesn't sell.

* NONVIOLENCE IS NOT THE BEST WAY TO WIN - IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO WIN.
And we are winning. People have probably abused animals for as long as
we've been on this planet, but then, in 1975, with the publication of Peter
Singer's Animal Liberation, things began to change. During the past 30
years, slowly but steadily, without causing a major backlash, our movement
has been growing and changing society, building like a snowball rolling down
a hill into a force that will, someday, make this world a more just and
compassionate place for all beings. We must not let a tiny minority of
violent extremists stop and reverse our progress with their
counterproductive violent outbursts. If we are to continue making progress,
we must recognize that violence is a cancer eating at the soul of our
movement. We must never aid or compromise with the tiny minority of
extremists who reject nonviolence and, with it, the only effective path to
animal liberation.

But, the most serious problem that our animal liberation movement faces is
not the small but loud group of extremists who commit violent acts in our
movement's name so much as it is the failure of leadership in the animal
liberation movement. While violent extremists explode bombs, set fires and
spread terror, where are the expressions of outrage from genuine national
animal rights leaders? Where is their rage as the movement to which they
have dedicated their lives is perverted by a violent few who have twisted
the term "direct action" from an expression of ethical, nonviolent civil
disobedience into an excuse for bombings and burnings? When will our
so-called leaders stop silently condoning violence and say to all the world,
as often as necessary, that those who commit violent acts in the name of our
movement are not animal rights activists, they do not speak in our name and
they will receive neither assistance nor support of any kind from this
movement?

How about now?

It's time to put the violence to an end before the violence puts an end to
our movement.

[nb: Rod Coronado is an environmental and animal rights activist, author,
and former member of the Animal Liberation Front who recently appeared on
CBS News 60 Minutes program with Animal Liberation Press Officer Dr. Jerry
Vlasak, speaking out about the use of direct action on behalf of animal
liberation. Fee free to post this elsewhere.]

This statement is in response to recent tremors once again felt in the
animal rights movement related to our support, encouragement and
explanations of illegal acts to save animal lives and homes.

While not all of us agree with the opinions and actions of groups such as
the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front and Revolutionary Cells,
the discussion of such groups actions and strategies is always worthy of
respect as part of a healthy exchange of ideas and theories that is a
hallmark of any legitimate movement endeavoring to keep pace with an ever
increasing flood of animal abuse and environmental destruction. Attempts to
discourage such discussions by privileged members of this country's ruling
elite (be they white, male, middle-class, career paid staff, etc.) resembles
too much the arguments put forth by the polite abolitionists societies of
the 19th century when acts of human liberation and freedom violated the
moral sensibilities and principles of such non-oppressed groups of self
appointed individuals of others suffering.

No amount of discussion and questioning of our path towards the liberation
of all oppressed individuals should ever be discouraged and never should
those that promote it be chastised by others in the movement who claim to
"know better". The opinions and views of some of our movement's most
uncompromising voices for the Earth and animals has crept into the public
mainstream's psyche only because people like Paul Watson, Ingrid Newkirk and
Dave Forman were courageous enough to express them in times of unpopularity,
often with the loudest criticisms from within our own ranks.

Discussions that include the rationale for using physical violence to
achieve animal liberation are simply the practical and moral progression of
a movement that must acknowledge its own double standards and hypocrisy when
defending the lives of those we argue are morally equal to ourselves. The
families of animals' and individuals themselves suffering in laboratories
and fur farms are no less capable of feeling great sorrow and suffering than
our own families if it were or own son's and daughter's being tortured be it
in Huntington Life Sciences or U.S. controlled interrogation and torture
centers in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba.

If the animal rights movement in the privileged heart of America most
responsible for such abuse truly believes in equal rights for all species as
I surely do, discussions of tactics that include physical violence cannot be
ignored. Limiting or preventing any discussion while others debate the best
mode of resistance to the suffering of others is a betrayal to those we
claim to represent and a betrayal to the heroic spirit of resistance that
was emblazoned by John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, the French
Resistance and the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto who all advocated the use of
arms to achieve liberation.

To think that our struggle is any different is naive and a failure to
recognize the true identity of the animals' and our own oppressor as being
the same evil force that has blanketed our beautiful planet with war and
violence long enough.
Recent discoveries of U.S. sponsored torture centers in Iraq where victims
had their skin partially removed should remind us that the Earth and
animals' oppressors have repeatedly demonstrated zero capacity for
compassion even for their own species. If nonviolent tactics do not put an
end to such atrocities carried out in our name in our time, we are obligated
as representatives of those suffering not only to abandon those tactics
which have failed us, but also to explore other avenues of resistance which
historically time and time again have proven to be what is necessary to stop
such state-sponsored violence.

In closing, I respect and appreciate the views shared by people like Jerry
Vlasak who are courageous enough to risk what this society has given them in
order to speak out against the same society's duplicity respect for life.
While not the principles of the ALF or ELF, I as an indigenous descendant of
a family forced to defend themselves with armed struggle, cannot deny that
now is an appropriate time to discuss such tactics.

I've always battled with my own hypocrisy, for if it was my own son in the
clutches of HLS or some other corporate or governmental death chamber, not
only would I employ every means available to rescue them, but do whatever
was necessary to ensure that those responsible were forever unable to commit
such atrocities ever again.